Thursday, May 28, 2009

My daughter started Canterbury in September 2008. As a newbie parent at CHS I was keen to find any information I could that would give me a bit of insight into what was happening at the school, how I might get involved and in general whether there was any way for me to learn more about the institution that would be my daughters home for the next 4 years.

I figured the best place to start was the school's official OCDSB website. It looked great, but it contained little of the information I was looking for as a parent. So I joined the Canterbury High School Council. There I learned that the School Council had a web site but that it was rarely updated. So I volunteered to help manage the website and turned it into a Wiki that everyone could help keep up to date. You can check it out at sites.google.com/site/canterburycouncil/. There you will find a handy calendar of the year's events, a constantly updated set of Announcements giving you a head's up on upcoming events that you, as a parent, might want to know about and perhaps even attend.

Now as the year draws to a close I think back to last September and I ask myself: "Does the website really provide a newbie parent with what I was looking for when I first arrived?" In part it does, but part of what I was looking for does not work well in a traditional web site format. I think I was looking more for advice. Stuff that parents learn over the years that if they had known it earlier would have made their life or they child's life at Canterbury a little easier. So I thought the School Council should try something a little different and set up this blog.

I haven't figured out all the details, but my idea is to find a group of parents from different grades to agree to upload blog posts every couple of weeks with announcements, messages, words of wisdom, questions or advice to share with other parents. Other parents could check out the blog periodically for advice from these parents, and even post some of their own advice in the comments. Together with the web site, we could create a place on the web where parents could go to give and accept advice on parenting in general, and parenting at Canterbury High School in particular.

It's almost June and summer is around the corner, so don't expect to see much change over the next few months, but as September approaches we'll start posting stuff that will be hopefully contain information and advice that some of you find valuable.

In the meantime, let me know what you think of this idea. And if you'd like to contribute, send me an email at vnishi@magma.ca.